Lovecraftian / Weird Fiction author of the week: Ann K. Schwader

Welcome to the fifteenth installment of my “Author of the Week”! These articles focus on Weird Fiction and/or Lovecraftian authors that I think more readers should know about. If you have suggestions, please email me at lovecraftezine@gmail.com .

Ann K. Schwader

This week’s author is Ann K. Schwader. Ann is one of our greatest Lovecraftian poets, and is the NecronomiCon’s Poet Laureate for 2015. She also writes Lovecraftian fiction. You can visit her website here.

I asked Ann five questions:

Please tell us about yourself—as much or as little as you’d like to say.

I’m a Wyoming native now living in suburban Colorado with my husband, a very spoiled corgi, too many houseplants, and a critical mass of books. I’ve got a BA in Magazine Journalism from Drake University (Des Moines, IA) and a MA in English Lit from the U. of Wyoming, though I’m not sure that I’ve put either one to good use. My interests outside of writing/reading include gardening, space, Egyptology – I keep trying to learn hieroglyphs — and volunteering at our local branch library.

How and why did you begin writing?

I can’t remember when I started writing poetry, though I suspect I was in grade school. I started trying to write fiction when I was in my early teens. By then, I was reading mostly science fiction, with some fantasy and horror thrown in. Output pretty much matched input. I started submitting to various magazines when I was in high school, and collected the usual pile of rejection slips – though Seventeen Magazine did take one poem. College and graduate school put a stop to most non-academic writing, though I did keep on with the poetry and placed quite a bit to campus magazines. (Most of this was mainstream, but I eventually recovered!) I took a few creative writing classes, but they didn’t seem interested in what I wanted to do. I also rediscovered Lovecraft, after first reading him in junior high.

I started seriously writing and submitting to the small and pro press in the mid-1980s. My first professional fiction sales were to Aboriginal SF, and the poetry wound up all over the place. I was really happy to discover that Lovecraftian editors wanted formal verse.

As for why I started writing: my parents read to us every night when my brother and I were little, and Dr. Seuss infected me with rhyme and meter. After that, what else could I do?

What is it about Lovecraftian horror and Weird Fiction that appeals to you?

Lovecraftian horror – at least the kind I enjoy reading and writing – has a strong science-fictional component. Lovecraft cared about the science of his time, and used it to full bleak advantage. He portrayed mankind as utterly unimportant to the rest of the universe, and likely to wind up as one more bug on the cosmic windshield. The fact that this particular bug has some complicated mythologies about the windshield is not going to save it.

I’m not sure that I have a firm understanding of Weird Fiction, but what I’ve read of it appeals to me because it’s so diverse. It allows writers to infuse their work with the unknown in any number of ways, and still find an audience. Even in the 21st century, the unknown still gets to us – the more we think we know, the scarier what we don’t or can’t know becomes.

Which of your books do you recommend that readers begin with?

Twisted in Dream (2011, Hippocampus Press). It’s got almost all my Lovecraftian/weird poems – up to 2010, anyhow! – including my SF sonnet sequence In the Yaddith Time and a brand new 12- sonnet sequence, Lavinia, that I wrote just for the collection.

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Ann K Schwader is a very dear friend of mine whose brilliant and keen mind has always kept me reading her “works” and left me lost in thought and also trying to ignore that chill going up my spine…Congratulations Ann! signed “The Miller’s”

I have been meaning to buy a book by Ann K. Schwader for a while now having loved her work in anthologies, and this article spurned me to do just that! My order for Twisted in Dream has been made, and I look forward to it!

Click the image! Fateful words of Lovecraftian horror... in anapaestic tetrameter. The Call of Cthulhu for Beginning Readers. H. P. Lovecraft’s classic short story, gloriously reimagined as a children’s book by R.J. Ivankovic. 102 pages, full color hardback. Available exclusively from Chaosium.com.

Click the image for details or to purchase! Awesome Cthulhu t-shirt designs, and much more! Reasonable prices. Click the image to browse!

Click the image for details! Major Arcana Tarot cards inspired by Lovecraft with the amazing art of Sara Bardi, and the new Cthulhu cult statuette for collectors.

Click the image for details! CTHULHU: Rise of the Cults - Strategy board game for 1-4 players. Lead your cult, celebrate rituals, crush the enemies, sow madness and please The Great Old Ones!

Click the image for details! New England and Lovecraftian tales! These stories range from "Watcher and Keeper". a tale with a Lovecraftian bent, about the real reason Lake Warren in East Alstead, New Hampshire, was created, to the title story which is an alternate history with a dark side.

Click the image for details! A shadowy world of occult rituals and unspeakable horrors, leading to a secret cabal operating at the highest levels—and a plot to summon the darkest of all powers, to bring forth an evil that does not belong in our world—to enact the Rites of Azathoth.

Click the image for details! A new landmark in underground Swedish horror, inspired by equal parts H.P. Lovecraft, David Lynch, and something far more disturbing: When her daughter is abducted by her ex-husband, a young mother will track the missing child and its father to a mysterious institution. But once inside, she will find herself trapped in a hallucinatory netherworld where reality turns amorphous, survival becomes parasitic, and an infested darkness lives and feeds in the light.

Click the image for details! Fans of the Mythos will find much to devour in this book and fans of horror, both psychological and abject, will find themselves drawn into Felix’s story and taken, kicking and screaming, along for the ride.

Click the image for details! Major Arcana Tarot cards inspired by Lovecraft with the amazing art of Sara Bardi, and the new Cthulhu cult statuette for collectors.

Click the image for details or to purchase! Embrace the darkness, the haunts of the shadows that surround you. Pull up your covers and enjoy a read. Let yourself drift into that other world; the place where the author controls your vision. See what he sees. Hear what he hears. Relish this collection of short dark fiction stories. -- "Fresh Cut Tales gives us originality and ambition. Solid combination from a writer to watch." ~ Mort Castle, Bram Stoker Award winning author of NEW MOON ON THE WATER

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Michael Davis (Lovecraft eZine) is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.